08 May. 2012

Solution Greece?
Zak Group

25th May – 16th June, 2012

OMMU presents the first exhibition in Greece by the London-based design office Zak Group. For the exhibition, Zak Group presents the Sternberg Press Solution series, edited by Ingo Niermann and designed by Zak Group beginning in 2008.

The Solution series invites authors to develop an abundance of compact and original ideas for countries and regions, contradicting the widely held assumption that after the end of socialism, human advancement is only possible technologically or requires a yet-to-be-established world order. In Solution 9: The Great Pyramid, Niermann writes: “When I told Rem Koolhaas about my title idea for the book series, he seemed earnestly alarmed. ‘Solution’ is a word he never uses. He demonstrated how his hand automatically begins to shake as soon as he even wants to write it.”

Zak Group is a London-based design office founded in 2005 by Zak Kyes; in 2012 Grégory Ambos joined as partner. The studio’s work has been included in the 22nd International Biennale of Graphic Design (Brno, 2009), “Graphic Design for and Against Cities” (Corner College, Zurich, 2009), “The Malady of Writing” (MACBA, Barcelona, 2009), “Wide White Space” (CCA Wattis, San Francisco, 2011), and “Graphic Design Worlds” (Triennale Design Museum, Milan, 2011).

For the exhibition OMMU has produced 25 + 10 A.P. limited edition two-color screen prints for sale through the bookshop titled “Solution Greece?” by Zak Group with Ingo Niermann.

Zak Group

10 Mar. 2012

OMMU at PA/PER VIEW
23th – 25th March, 2012

The 4th edition of PA/PER VIEW Brussels will take place at Wiels.

PA/PER VIEW art book fair brings together +/- 40 leading artist book publishers.
Leave your laptop behind and come and browse amongst the finest titles of these consistent players of the printed word and image.

Pa/per View

08 Dec. 2011

The Kingsboro Press
ALLEY OOP

OMMU presents an exhibition organized by The Kingsboro Press
9th – 24th December, 2011

There’s a man in the funny papers we all know
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
He lived way back a long time ago
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
Oh well this cat’s name is a-Alley Oop
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
He’s got a chauffeur that’s a genuine dinosaur
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
He rides through the jungle tearin’ limbs offa trees
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
And knocking great big monsters dead on their knees
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
Other cats don’t bug him ‘cos they know better
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
Cos he’s a mean motor scooter and a bad go-getter
Alley Oop Oop Oop Oop Oop
The Kingsboro Press presents
Miles Houston, Indiana Jones, Will Hunting, Neal Reinalda, Erik Lindman
Alley Oop

28 Nov. 2011

ROLU 4 OMMU

ROLU is an art and design studio based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
OMMU is an art and design bookstore/distributor based in Athens, Greece.

ROLU 4 OMMU is four pieces of furniture, two large modular adaptable chairs, Chair 1 and Chair 2, as well as A Desk and A Desk Chair, that are part of a new design ROLU made for OMMU’s store in Athens. Also produced in this project was a bookshelf that is based on a work by the artist Seth Price and a ladder. Price’s essay Décor Holes came to be an important part of our thinking as these pieces started to emerge. The writing discusses, in part, the “sample” as it exists in modern music and questions it raises about ownership. We started to ask ourselves “When does something… become something else?” We wanted the work we produced for this project to have a theoretical basis that pointed towards language. We also wanted to think about motion. We like to use the term “sitting as seeing” to describe a philosophical ghost we are chasing. The forms of these pieces are, in a sense, like “visual samples.” They are based on shapes found in drawings the choreographer Trisha Brown made in the early seventies. These drawings contain a sense of motion and it’s easy to see their visual connection to dance but, they also look like typography… like a written language we don’t quite recognize. And so we ask ourselves: When does a dance become a drawing? When does a drawing become a chair? Can a chair act as a kind of choreographer? Maybe we’ll never know but we love how they turned out and hope you do too!

A two sided poster designed by Benjamin Critton for the release of ROLU 4 OMMU is available to download and print here. The posters were originally available as part of MISS READ at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.

A book about ROLU’s work designed by Benjamin Critton will be published by OMMU in 2012.

ROLU4OMMU

08 Nov. 2011

OMMU at MISS READ Art Book Fair
25th – 27th November, 2011

For the third time MISS READ has invited international publishers and artists to show their books at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. As a genre of its own, the artist book reflects contemporary ways of artistic production and publishing to a great extent and also addresses issues of presentation and circulation as well as new strategies of distribution. Presenting a selection of more than 80 of the most active contributors in this field, the festival provides the opportunity to encounter and explore the contemporary scene of independent publishing.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

15 Jun. 2011

OMMU Temporary Bookstore in Rome
June 17th – 24th, 2011

OMMU is pleased to announce the opening of a Temporary Bookshop in collaboration with NERO magazine in Rome.

06 Jun. 2011

Manystuff at OMMU

OMMU invites Manystuff to present its activities during a talk, illustrated by a wall installation.
A publication, published by OMMU, Riso printed, will be launched for the occasion.

16th June – 9th July 2011, Wall Exhibition
16th June, 7pm, Talk & Publication launch

Publication
Album 1 – From Kunstkammers to Vanitas

On January 2011, Manystuff presented the exhibition «Kunstkammer, The representation of an amateur wonder-room» at 12MAIL gallery in Paris.
Using representations of amateur wonder-rooms of the 17th century as a starting point, the exhibition was a graphic design posters amateur/collector room (the collection of Charlotte Cheetham) – as in a private interior, walls were covered by an accumulation of juxtaposed paintings with no hierarchy, frame against frame, from the floor to the ceiling – and also included a wonder-room (curiosities cabinet) with silkscreen commissioned posters.
The idea was to work on the “ideal museum”, as these representations of amateur wonder-rooms sometimes combined fiction and reality: an imaginary décor, copies of masterpieces and hybrid collections.

With the publication published by OMMU, the purpose was to compose a compendium of paintings that inspired this exhibition: from Kunstkammers to Cabinet of Curiosities representations, and finishing with the vanities paintings.
To give form to this compendium, to design the trace of this documentation, Charlotte Cheetham worked with Pierre Vanni who make the publication a graphic curiosity itself.

An extract of Georges Perec novel – A gallery portrait – is also illustrating the idea.

48 pages / A5 / 3-color Riso – Black, Blue & Flat Gold

Manystuff at OMMU